Our Bloc is a blueprint for a new combination of left-wing forces in Britain. James Schneider proposes a movement-party organisation that acts in society and in the Labour Party, through which party members, social movements, trade unions and socialist-inclined MPs could coordinate their political work. He adapts Chantal Mouffe’s theory of left populism to set out how the bloc could popularise socialist ideas and bend the parameters of politics towards its demands.
Socialist perspectives are now rarely heard in mainstream public debate, after five years under Jeremy Corbyn when the left had some success in shaping political discourse. There is a large base of potential activists and an even larger section of the population available for mobilisation, but no central force to unite and organise them.
Calls to ‘stay and fight’ against Keir Starmer’s failing leadership of the Labour Party are inadequate: socialists need a platform from which to do it. Schneider presents his Left Bloc as a pole of attraction for everyone seeking fundamental economic, social, political and environmental change. In this incisive book he sets out a plan for the next ten years: to build power, weaken our opponents and prepare ourselves for the next surge.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 144
Imprint: Verso
Publication date: 13/09/2022
Our Bloc: How We Win
By James Schneider
Review by Harry
Informed by the social-movementist tradition, Schneider uses what is essentially an one-hundred page leaflet to expound his view of how we can confront the chaotic inferno of neoliberalism.
Residing at the apex of the British body politic—in his time as the confidante and senior aide of Jeremy Corbyn—Schneider possesses an insight and programmatic thought that only experience in the dreary trenches of day-to-day parliamentary politics can provide.
At the core of his argument lies the belief that the redemption of electoral politics can be, must be, attained through the civil society sphere. This begs the question—what is the purpose of a political party? Certainly, in the Labour Party tradition, the answer is that a political party is a vehicle for the expression and advancement of the priorities important to the organised working classes. In other words, the legitimacy of a political machine is intertwined with how it 'connects' and reflects the grassroots.
All over the world, we see the fall of once mighty and established political institutions—termed Pasokification, in reference to the complete collapse of the Greek centre-left party there—an outgrowth of the fraught status quo of neoliberalism. For anyone engaged or mortified by this trend, Our Bloc: How We Win will edify and entertain. To those who identify with the grassroots-driven modality of politics — power from below, not the revolution from above — the substantive content of Schneider's pamphlet will be most useful.
'From here to there' could then perhaps be considered the working title of this non-fiction novella. To get 'there' — away from the managed decline and growing instability of Western politics — we need a mass movement of left-populist politics. This means re-legitimising the social contract and our public institutions by once again making Government and our economy work in the interest of those who make society run—working people.
That being the strategic objective, the process is activating the various strands of the public mileu discontent with the way things are currently run. It is in this the discerning reader will get the most mileage out of Schneider's political thought. Not one for pie-in-the sky dissertations, Schneider excels not only at identifying the pressure points, but also what precisely we can do to mobilise public sentiment. In some sense, it can be considered a manual for community organising — the relationship-building necessary for any campaign or political outfit that wants to be a real presence in public life, and not just another interesting little news item.
In the context of an increasingly treacherous and volatile terrain of politics, such guidance is most welcome.
